Who am I ?

This is a question I have often asked myself, and considering I still can't answer it to my own satisfaction you may not be entirely satisfied either. For what it's worth though . . .

I am currently residing in Australia (this is not who I am but where I am - but this can and will change on a semi regular basis for the indeterminate future) and I've been viewing the world through the viewfinder for over 30 years. I had briefly studied photography in high school, so after quitting my job as a draftsman and exploring more creative pursuits I decided to incorporate it into my repertoire, the result being that after only a few years it had begun to dominate as my preferred medium. By the time of my first solo exhibition in 1989 half of the work was photography and five years later the next show was all photographs (this isn't who I am either, but what I did). Originally attracted to nature and landscapes, I have since developed an interest in a more diverse range of subjects, particularly architecture and the quirky details often found when travelling. Pictures of people are still low on the list for some reason though - I'll have to work on that one (now we might be getting a bit closer to who I am).

Having practiced photography for quite a while now, and having exhibited and sold both within Australia and internationally, I still can't make claims to either fame or to having famous clients, nor to having been published in any publications, illustrious or otherwise, or even to having won any prestigious awards (nominations for eight years in a row now, but no prizes, although I have recently received a silver award for my book "unfamiliar" in the TIFA Awards and an Honorable Mention in another).

I can't explain why I have the urge to create images any more than I understand my urge to cook food or any of the other creative pursuits that I enjoy such as furniture making, writing haiku poetry, designing things or making books, but the obvious answer would be that I enjoy the process along with the results! Travel is my muse, hence the majority of photographs shown here were taken while travelling and I will simply let the viewer appraise them, and by extension me, as the images I produce and present could be seen as a (somewhat limited) type of autobiography.

“Everyone wants to understand art. Why don’t we try to understand the song of a bird? Why do we love the night, the flowers, everything around us, without trying to understand them? But in the case of a painting, people think they have to understand. If only they would realize above all that an artist works of necessity, that he himself is only an insignificant part of the world, and that no more importance should be attached to him than to plenty of other things which please us in the world though we can’t explain them; people who try to explain pictures are usually barking up the wrong tree.” - Pablo Picasso